An awful lot has changed about TV since TiVo ushered in the age of the DVR in 1999. Back then, watching television was something you did on a television, and you got your programming via cable, satellite or bunny ears. If you wondered what other people were watching, you asked them. (Probably in person.) And the only practical way to share a favorite show was to dub it onto a VHS tape.

Fast forward to 2012. That’s when TiVo’s founders Mike Ramsay and Jim Barton began working on a new idea together, one designed for the modern era of TV watching. It’s called Qplay, and they’re announcing it today. Ramsay recently gave me a sneak peek.

Like their previous collaboration, Qplay involves a box that plugs into a TV a tiny $49 box this time, looking a bit like a skinny USB hard drive and a service that helps you find stuff to watch. But instead of tapping broadcast TV, Qplay sifts through free videos available on the Internet, using social cues to find specific videos. And rather than giving you anything akin to TiVo’s iconic, peanut-shaped remote control, it lets you control your experience using an iPad app. You can watch videos on either the TV or the tablet.

Qplay aims to provide you with videos of interest without ever forcing you to hunt down a specific video. It organizes them into something it calls a Q a continuous stream of items on a particular theme, which it strings together no matter where it found them. As Flipboard does with text content, Qplay gets some of these feeds by scanning Twitter accounts: For instance, there’s a Q made up of all the videos The Verge has tweeted, presumably making for good watching for tech enthusiasts. As you watch videos and tap the Like icon, the app uses that feedback to help it refine what it shows you.

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Read also:

TiVo Founders Try to Reprogram Internet Video (ABC News)

From the Brains Behind TiVo, a New Vision for Internet Video (Wired)

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